This might seem like an unusually frivolous post from incorrigibly high-minded me. But hey, it's mid-August; if I lived in Europe, I'd be off all month. I also remain deep into book-writing, and am now being forced by the calendar to devote time and attention I really don't have to preparing for the fall semester. (Thankfully, I'm only teaching one class this upcoming term, and it's my third time through 'Conservatism in Theory and Practice,' a first-year seminar with just 15 students.) Put it all together, and I guess you could say I'm in the mood for something a little fun, a little playful, a little light, but also, I hope, something nonetheless illuminating'about how I think about ideas and my role as an intellectual, about our political culture, and about our social-media-shaped and -saturated reality. To begin with, I'm not including Elon Musk in my list because it would be too obvious. The richest man on the planet; the world's first trillionaire; the owner of the very...
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